FCP 5.1 choppy on older Mac

Question

FCP 5.1 choppy on older Mac

Hi there and thanks for reading!

I have an older, and i mean older, mac

OS x version 10.5.8

2 GHz power pc G5

1 GB DDR sdRam

Final Cut Pro 5.1 [yes, I know it's old, but I needed to match what they had at the public access station]

Lately my Final Cut has been running choppy. Doesn't matter if I restart. To that end, I dropped a bunch of stuff off the harddrive, so it could work better. Now I have 65 gb available and have used 168 on harddrive. Still the same problem, with no improvement whatsoever.

I also am getting the "Spinning Wheel of Death" almost any time I try to do anything on the program. Render times are unbelievably long and doing chromakey or luma key with other special effects is almost impossible because of the slow times. Also the program will not even play some stuff, but just spins [i.e.the spinning wheel of death] and then jumps ahead - eventually after a minute or so.

Until recently, this was a great machine and I was able to do lots of stuff with it, including editing a feature film.

If you have thoughts or insights for me, that'd be great!

Final Cut Pro 6, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Apr 21, 2016 5:25 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

BDAqua

Level 10

239,225 points

Apr 22, 2016 5:12 AM in response to Medieval Denizen

While 1GB of RAM satisfies the minimum requirement, I'm certain more RAM would help.

Open Activity Monitor, Show:>All Processes, sort on CPU%, see if anything using too much CPU% when this happens, click on Memory tab, do you have many Pageouts?

Open Console in Applications>Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

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Answer 2

Apr 22, 2016 5:16 AM in response to BDAqua

I appreciate your reply. Thank you.

Ummm, I tried what you said and the results are difficult for me to interpret. What might I be looking for?????????

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

239,225 points

Apr 23, 2016 9:33 AM in response to Medieval Denizen

In Console you'd be looking for some messages repeating every few seconds, or words like failed, not found, etc.

In Activity Monitor>Pageouts, the fewer the better...

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Answer 4

Apr 23, 2016 9:41 AM in response to BDAqua

Hey, thanks for the pic! And for the reply. I really appreciate your help!

I am looking in activity monitor, system memory and the page outs are 120.00 kb.

Now, looking in Console, I do see "bad cpu type in executable" as a message over and over again.

The CPU usage is 2.30 to 12.15

%system is 2.28 - 3.74

% idle is 0-96.00

Threads 228

Processes 54

This is all greek to me, but perhaps it means something to you????

Have a nice day.

Medieval Denizen

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Answer 5

Apr 23, 2016 9:44 AM in response to Medieval Denizen

BTW that was sorting on "My Processes"

Sorting on "All Processes"

%User 2/3 to 16

%system 1/16 to 7.75

%Nice 0

%Idle 61 to 92

Threads 27 to 230

Processes 54

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Answer 6

BDAqua

Level 10

239,225 points

Apr 23, 2016 12:29 PM in response to Medieval Denizen

Now, looking in Console, I do see "bad cpu type in executable" as a message over and over again.

Hmmm, where did you get this Install of FBP from, seems it must be Intel code mostly?

Do a Get Info on FSP & report as much as you can about the results please. 🙂

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Answer 7

BDAqua

Level 10

239,225 points

Apr 23, 2016 8:51 PM in response to Medieval Denizen

If you need further help diagnosing this...

Open Console in Applications>Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

Click on the top line we want, Shift plus click on the bottom line we want, CMD+c to copy, then paste the text in a reply with CMD+v

A few dozen lines should be about right, hundreds or thousands won't likely be readable

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Answer 8

Apr 25, 2016 7:11 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi BD Aqua,

Thanks much for your help.

What do you mean by FBP and FSP???

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Answer 9

BDAqua

Level 10

239,225 points

Apr 25, 2016 10:07 AM in response to Medieval Denizen

Sorry for my poor vision & one finger typing, FSP was likely meant to be FCP, Final Cut Pro, likely the same for FSP! 😕😢

So, is it really sorted now?

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Answer 10

Apr 25, 2016 11:22 AM in response to BDAqua

No problemo!

The FCP program is 5.1

I got that older program because I wanted to match what my local public access television station had so I could edit there, too.

In reading about FCP and the message "Bad CPU" it seems there is a basic incompatibility between the mac and the fcp program. However, I did not have a problem with the mac running slow and choppy until recently. I do not take the computer out on the web, so there's no chance of a virus.

It does take forever to render files, in addition to having to render or convert original footage. I did not have to do this 6 months ago. I am working on a FCP file that has alot of chromakey, luma key and special effects in it.

Appreciate any help on this.

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